Soldiers of the Cheshire Regiment in a trench on the Somme in 1916, one keeping watch while others rest
Cheshire Regiment trench on the Somme, July 1916
Marked Ypres

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The First World War

The great powers of Europe and their empires fought a war that spread across the world, from France to East Africa and the Middle East. About nine million soldiers died, many in the trenches of the Western Front.

Place
Ypres · The Somme · Gallipoli · Verdun · TangaThe whole world
Laid out as
A warTwo sides, a front line, and the turns the fighting took.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet
Image
John Warwick Brooke, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

The Allies: France, the British empire, Russia, Italy, the United States and others

  1. IWhy war came
  2. IIThe trenches
  3. IIIThe Somme
  4. IVGallipoli
  5. VSoldiers from the empires
  6. VIThe war at home
  7. VIIArmistice

The Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman empire and Bulgaria

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Wilfred Owen
  • Edith Cavell
  • Walter Tull
  • Khudadad Khan
  • Mustafa Kemal

Objects

  • Letters home
  • The Menin Gate
  • Trench maps

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1914 to 1918. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?